Machines of the type contemplated are disclosed in copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 467,637, now abandoned, filed May 7, 1974 by Jean-Marc Dronet and assigned to the assignee of the present invention, the disclosure of said patent application being included herein by reference. A complete disclosure of a machine of this type is made in U.S. Pat. No. 3,000,157 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,904,305, both of which are assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
According to the teaching of said patent application, the tape-like strip is drawn from a roll and, via idling guide rollers, introduced into guiding channels from where they arrive immediately at the individual molds. The strip portion in the mold is then cut off by means forming part of the mold itself.
It has been found that, in order to achieve a maximum operation sequence of the machine, the introduction of the strip into the molds during the extremely short interval within which the shaping apparatus is in its lowermost position, extremely great accelerations of the strip including its length up to the storage roll will be necessary, the resulting forces eventually resulting in fracturing of the strip. It is, therefore, the object of the present invention to provide the machine with means to introduce a tape-like strip into the mold such that the drawback mentioned above will be avoided. It is a further object of the invention to provide a machine of this type in which the drawing of the tape-like strip from the storage roll and the introduction thereof into the mold will take place as two operations separated in time and/or space, as the case may be.